Lucretia’s Holiday Gone Wrong

From June 18– July 2, 1881, Lucretia Garfield was in Long Branch, New Jersey staying at the Elberon House Hotel. Her daughter Mollie was with her, along with friends Mrs. Lionel Sheldon and Mrs. Almon F. Rockwell. Theirs was a collective effort to assist Mrs. Garfield in overcoming the last bit of malaria, which she contracted in early May. The day Lucretia left Washington for New Jersey to begin her recovery, she was escorted by her husband in the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station. One individual who saw them together at the station observed that, “Mrs. Garfield looked so thin and clung so tenderly to the President’s arm, my heart failed me to part them.” This reflection came eerily from Charles Guiteau. He had been at the Washington station with his pistol that day – waiting to put his plan of killing the President into action. Guiteau's reflection on Mrs. Garfield’s condition came from a series of writings he composed while in prison after the President's assassination.

On June 30th, Lucretia wrote what became the last letter to her husband. Having been in New Jersey for a few weeks and in better health and spirits, she spoke of their plans to meet in Elberon (Long Branch) to begin their vacation journey to New England. Unfortunately, those plans would never come to fruition. After continuing to stalk the President for several days, Charles Guiteau shot him in the back on July 2. Garfield fell to the floor in the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station as he waited for the train which would eventually take him east to reunite with his wife. Lucretia, no doubt looking forward to her husband's visit, had no idea what the next few hours would bring. On July 2nd, as Mollie and Lucretia were chatting with Mrs. Rockwell and the Swaims in the hotel drawing room, Garfield’s old friend Major David Swaim entered with the frightening news, dictated about 11:00 a.m. by Garfield through A.F. Rockwell. The telegram read: “The President wishes me to say to you that he has been seriously hurt, how seriously he cannot yet say. He is himself and hopes that you will come to him soon. He sends his love to you. (Signed) A. F. Rockwell.” Garfield was anxious about how the news would affect Lucretia in her state of convalescence after her illness; would she have a relapse?

Garfield had been shot about 9:20 a.m. Rockwell explained that there had been an attempted assassination.

Lucretia immediately asked Swaim, who had tried to conceal the serious nature of the shooting, to “Tell me the truth.” Swaim told her what he knew, that a gunman who was angered over Garfield’s treatment of the Stalwart faction of Republicans, thought that removing Garfield would elevate Arthur to the presidency and the country would be better off. “Arthur is President and I am a Stalwart!” Guiteau had shouted.

Mollie and Lucretia left Elberon on a local train at 12:40 p.m. At Monmouth Junction, NJ, they transferred to a special train that the Pennsylvania RR had arranged to rush them to Washington. What most folks don’t know is that a life-threatening accident occurred with that train while it was enroute to the President. The track had been cleared and the engineer pushed the locomotive to full throttle, speeding along at over 60 mph. Near Bowie, MD, about 20 mi. south of Baltimore, there was a jolt and a sickening loud crack. Looking out his window, the engineer “saw that a steel engine rod had sheared; a six-foot spike of jagged metal stuck outward and had begun swinging out of control, tearing up track ties and crashing against the engine’s own wheels. It made the train veer wildly side to side, its wheels barely holding the steel track. The engineer yanked hard on the air brakes, jolting Lucretia and the others from their seats, throwing them forward. The train took a full two miles to reach a stop; a derailment would have killed them.”

The President constantly questioned those around him, “Where is Crete?”… “Where is she now?” …“When shall I see her?”

If the near-accident affected Crete, she didn’t show it – only her impatience at being stranded as her husband might be dying. Around 7:00 p.m. the Garfield family was reunited at the Executive Mansion. “Frail, fatigued, desperate, but firm and quiet and full of purpose to save,” Lucretia had to be supported from her carriage to the door of her husband’s sick room. Husband and wife had a private meeting. Once in the room, she greeted James with a smile, promising he would not die so long as she was there to nurse him. Out of Garfield’s presence though, she broke down and wept.

Son Jim’s diary entry for July 2, 1881 states that “Mamma was very brave & courageous. ...Mamma’s arrival seemed to encourage him [Papa] a great deal.”

Lucretia had always been a woman to meet adversity head-on, adjust her sights, and carry on. This is most likely a result of being the eldest child in her family, having chores and responsibilities, along with her mother’s stressing the “virtue of self-government” in raising her.

Two later letters convey some of Lucretia’s innermost thoughts during this period:

“Cleveland, O.
Nov. 20th 1881

My dear Victoria [not the Queen],

How far on in life’s journey I seem to have gone since your little visit to us in Mentor last winter. I seem to have touched the outermost limits of human experience, to have been lifted into a proud happiness in the honors paid to my dear husband only to be dashed down into cruel darkness – the light of my life taken away, and my heart left desolate. It does in a feeble way make amends for the cruel wrong done the dear noble man, that the whole world so mourns his loss, and the sympathy given to us in our great bereavement does help us endure; but there is a heart break over it all that nothing can reach save the one thought – if it indeed be true – that he still lives a life that is over suffering and death triumphant. …Yours most sincerely Lucretia R. Garfield”

“Cleveland, O.
Sept. 19, 1882

Col. A.F. Rockwell
Washington, D.C.

Very Dear Friend,

There are no words can tell the thoughts that come to me this anniversary of our woe. On year ago this morning the air, the sunshine, even the old relentless sea had in it a voice of gladness, and all seemed to tell me that my beloved would be brought back to live with us again. Before another morning all hope had gone out with his life which had passed away, and the sunshine was a mockery and the sea had in its voice no pity. Sometimes I think nature was rejoicing over his release and could not weep with us though we were left in the darkness of our measureless loss… …Your Friend, Lucretia R. Garfield”